What's on Your Mind?

Lorrie Faith Cranor’s latest effort to educate people about privacy is a short, colorfully illustrated book written for an audience who probably can’t read it yet. Cranor, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and director of the Pittsburgh school’s CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory, wrote Privacy, Please! after publishing more than 200 research papers, spending a 2016–2017 stint as the Federal Trade Commission’s chief technologist, and making a quilt and dress illustrated with commonly used weak passwords. In a Zoom video call, Cranor says she got the idea for this self-published children’s book when planning for a privacy-outreach event at a loc…

In a sign of the times, Boy Scouts can now earn badges in artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity as they learn tech survival skills. The Boy Scouts of America, which rebranded as Scouting America after 115 years back in February, counts about 1 million scouts in its ranks, and has traditionally offered badges to encourage kids to learn outdoor survival skills like first aid, hiking, and cooking, or soft skills like public speaking, communication, and citizenship in the world. (Here’s a look at all the 141 badges.) “The artificial intelligence (AI) merit badge introduces Scouts to the fundamentals of AI and automation through hands-on activities and real-wo…

You might not spend a lot of time thinking about your web browser, whether it’s Safari, Chrome, or something else. But the decades-old piece of software remains a pretty important canvas for getting things done. That’s why Tara Feener, who spent years developing creative tools with companies such as Adobe, WeTransfer, and Vimeo, decided to join the Browser Company and within two years became head of engineering, overseeing its AI-forward Dia browser. “This is more ambitious than any of the other things I’ve done, because it’s where you live your life, and where you create within,” she says. Whereas a conventional browser presents you with a search box on its home scre…

On May 19, 2023, a photograph appeared on what was then still called Twitter showing smoke billowing from the Pentagon after an apparent explosion. The image quickly went viral. Within minutes, the S&P 500 dropped sharply, wiping out billions of dollars in market value. Then the truth emerged: the image was a fake, generated by AI. The markets recovered as quickly as they had tumbled, but the event marked an important turning point: this was the first time that the stock market had been directly affected by a deepfake. It is highly unlikely to be the last. Once a fringe curiosity, the deepfake economy has grown to become a $7.5 billion market, with some prediction…

Featuring Joon Choi, President, Weverse; Aron Levitz, President, Wattpad Webtoon Studios and Co-President, Wattpad and Gita Rebbapragada, Chief Operating Officer, Crunchyroll. Moderated by Tania Rahman, Social Media Director, Fast Company. Cultivating a loyal fan base is every brand’s dream. So why not take a page out of the book of companies that have made fandom the foundation of their business? Hear from execs at Weverse, Crunchyroll, and Wattpad to gain an understanding of how these companies cultivate and serve their diehard fandoms—and how you can apply that approach to your customers. View the full article

In many states, you can get kicked out of your home if the local government thinks someone else will generate more tax revenue. The Takings Clause is a part of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and it says that if the government wants to take away someone’s private property, they have to do it in a way that’s fair. Most of us grew up hearing adults say that life isn’t fair. And they’re right—it isn’t. Neither is an authority forcing you to give up your property for whatever they think is fair. Courts have said the government can take your property if it’s for something that benefits the public, like building a road or a park. As if that could…

The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. Doom-and-gloom narratives about artificial intelligence going rogue to the detriment of humans are a staple of popular culture. For some people, just say “AI,” and visions of Skynet from the Terminator movies taking over the world will instantly pop into their heads. Skepticism about AI isn’t just in the realm of science fiction, of course. As AI becomes more mainstream, legitimate concern…

The Ford Pinto. New Coke. Google Glass. History is littered with products whose fatal flaw— whether failures of safety, privacy, performance, or plain old desirability—repelled consumers and inflicted reputational damage to the companies bringing them to market. It’s easy to imagine the difference if these problems had been detected early on. And too often, businesses neglect the chance to work with nonprofits, social enterprises, and other public interest groups to make product improvements after they enter the marketplace or, more ideally, “upstream,” before their products have entered the crucible of the customer. For companies and consumer groups alike, this…

In July, President The President signed an executive order aimed at expanding access to alternative investments like private equity and cryptocurrency in retirement accounts. The move reflects a broader shift in how Americans think about wealth building and financial freedom, and it is a signal to employers that the future of employee benefits is going to look very different. While crypto may have once seemed fringe or speculative, digital assets have steadily moved into the mainstream. From Fortune 100 companies to institutional investors, the appetite for diversification beyond traditional asset classes is growing. According to a survey by NYDIG, 36% of employees ag…

Discussions around the role of work in our lives are frequently divided into two camps. “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”, one side proclaims. The other: “A job just needs to pay the bills.” The first school of thought is an example of “intrinsic motivation”. Here, the enjoyment of work for work’s sake is motivating enough, rather than relying on external rewards like money or praise. And while it’s great to love your job, recent research suggests that it can become problematic when intrinsic motivation is regarded as morally superior to other motivations. “When a neutral preference becomes charged with moral meaning, social scientists c…

One of the most pervasive rules of business is compete-to-win or perish. But as more organizations struggle to navigate an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous landscape, some innovative leaders are choosing to collaborate over compete. This is particularly necessary within the organization, where collaboration may be considered beneficial in theory, but in practice, the rules of engagement still revolve around competition: colleagues become rivals over promotion opportunities, recognition, and advancement. The competition within the organization makes it harder to navigate the disruption and certainty on the outside. How do leaders banish in-h…

The battle for Warner Brothers Discovery got hotter this week as Paramount launched a hostile bid of $108.4 billion for the company, topping Netflix’s agreement last week to pay nearly $83 billion for the company’s streaming and studio assets. It’s the largest M&A deal of 2025 and rightfully will receive tough scrutiny in the U.S. and Europe. The ultimate price for Warner Brothers Discovery will certainly factor heavily into who wins the fight, especially with investors, and there could be additional bidders and proposals. For sure, an acquisition by Netflix of one of the oldest Hollywood studios, Warner Brothers, and its HBO Max streaming service would have…

In utterly bleak news, AI Overviews are now more accurate about the lack of a relationship between autism and vaccines than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). On Wednesday, November 19, the CDC published an updated web page that defies broad scientific consensus and even its own past statements. The page now alleges that “‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.” It must be said as early and clearly as possible that there is no link between vaccines and autism, as overwhelming data has demonstrated. Despite that fact, the first paragr…

A recent New York Times headline—“Did Women Ruin the Workplace?”—sparked a firestorm across social media. Alison Moore, CEO of Chief, the prestigious network for senior women executives, is pushing back on this notion with data and nuance. Drawing from an exclusive nationwide survey of women leaders, Moore unpacks how evolving career paths are being misread, the impact of market disruption, and why women-centered spaces remain vital. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scalepodcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today…

In 1983, Howard Schultz was an employee of Starbucks, a small chain of coffee stores that mainly sold beans (and no drinks), when he was sent to Milan for a trade show. As Schultz observed Italians visiting their local cafés, he loved what he saw, describing it as a “sense of community, a real sense of connection between the barista and the customer.” A few years later, after Schultz convinced Starbucks’s owners to sell him the company, the new owner attempted to build that same type of connection here in the U.S. To do so, Schultz knew he had to take care of his people. He called them “partners,” not employees, a symbol of a more collaborative working relationshi…

When a leader inherits a business in crisis, what decisions can they make to steady the ship and drive positive change? The Honest Company CEO Carla Vernón and National Women’s Soccer League commissioner Jessica Berman riff on counterintuitive methods for gaining employee trust after public scandals and share practical advice on reframing strategy. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by former Fast Company editor-in-chief Bob Safian and recorded live at the 2025 Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business leade…

In these volatile times, how do we navigate the intersection between values and commerce? Patagonia CEO Ryan Gellert and Chobani CEO Hamdi Ulukaya join New York Times reporter David Gelles onstage at the Masters of Scale Summit to reveal their different strategies for dealing with an activist White House, the pressure for what moderator Gelles calls “anticipatory compliance,” and how they grow their businesses while also prioritizing causes like environmental conservation and immigration. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response recorded live at the 2025 Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podc…

Today, no matter where you are in the world, it’s not unusual to find yourself working alongside an analyst from Amsterdam, a strategist from San Francisco, or a designer from Dubai. As companies look increasingly further afield for workers, they unlock a range of benefits—from wider talent pools that make it easier to find specialized talent to the injection of new perspectives that offer insights into diverse customer bases. While most business leaders agree that developing the right workplace model is crucial to their company’s success, only 24% feel their organization is actually ready to fully embrace a distributed workforce. The list of potential reasons for thi…

Norman Foster has always treated technology as a form of expression. As one of the pioneers of high-tech architecture (along with his friend and colleague Richard Rogers), his buildings celebrate exposed structure, advanced engineering, and machine-age style. Think of the flashy steel trusses and tension rods of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank headquarters, the transparent spirals of the Reichstag dome in Berlin, or the diagonal frame of the elliptical Gherkin in London. His latest project, dubbed the Gateway to Venice’s Waterway, recently unveiled at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, extends that tradition into electric mobility. Developed with Porsche and the …

Three years ago, if someone needed to fix a leaky faucet or understand inflation, they usually did one of three things: typed the question into Google, searched YouTube for a how-to video or shouted desperately at Alexa for help. Today, millions of people start with a different approach: They open ChatGPT and just ask. I’m a professor and director of research impact and AI strategy at Mississippi State University Libraries. As a scholar who studies information retrieval, I see that this shift of the tool people reach for first for finding information is at the heart of how ChatGPT has changed everyday technology use. Change in searching The biggest change i…

In today’s fast-paced world, it’s easy to feel that external circumstances dictate our existence. We attribute success and failure to factors beyond our control—the economy, the government, societal expectations, or unforeseen events. But here’s the thing: Blaming externalities diminishes our sense of agency and hinders our growth and fulfillment. The opposite is also true. Choosing personal sovereignty—claiming our power as the ultimate architects of our life experience—leads to a more empowered and authentic existence. The illusion of control From a young age, we are conditioned to seek validation and direction from external sources. Society’s norms, cultura…

Companies are increasingly using AI to conduct job interviews, and, according to experts in the field, the technology is leading to some impressive results. However, giving candidates the choice between an AI interviewer or a human can create bias that makes landing a job tougher for some people, according to a new report. AI is now a common part of the job application process. According to the World Economic Forum, around 88% of employers use some form of AI for initial candidate screening such as filtering or ranking job applications. But AI is also being used to conduct interviews. Currently, around 21% of U.S. companies use the technology for initial interviews. …

Dallas is prepared to spend big to protect its logo. In fact, the Dallas City Council voted last week to spend up to $200,000 as part of a federal lawsuit to cancel the trademark of Triple D Gear, a Dallas apparel company that the city argues uses a logo so similar to its own that it causes confusion. One sign of a good civic mark, whether it’s a logo or a flag, is whether it becomes a symbol of popular expression. People get tattoos of the Chicago flag, for example, but not the flag of Illinois (hence the state’s efforts to redesign it). The Dallas logo, then, has done its job. Maybe too well. The city’s logo, which has been in use since 1972, features concentric…

The Koss Porta Pro headphones are one of the most iconic and popular designs in the history of audio equipment. The headphones were first released in 1984 in response to the rise of the Sony Walkman and aimed to translate the company’s audio prowess into a portable, affordable form factor. The results were unmistakably odd. The collapsible headband, blue driver housings and striking shape meant you could spot them from a mile away. But Koss managed to deliver its trademark warm, bassy sound signature into an accessible product, and its retro-futuristic industrial design has never quite gone out of style. Wikimedia Koss, which is still a family-run business head…